VelocityShares Jumping in to VIX ETP Space with Leveraged and Inverse Products

Less than two weeks after I mapped out the various VIX exchange-traded products (ETNs + ETFs) in The Evolving VIX ETN Landscape, that landscape has has already changed dramatically. The first surprise was the launch of the C-Tracks ETN on CVOL (CVOL), a direct competitor to VXX, one week ago today.

The bigger change, however, is a suite of six new VIX-based ETNs on the way from VelocityShares (see filing) to be issued by Credit Suisse (hat tip to Adam Warner, who may be de-blogging for awhile, but is still tweeting his thoughts.) In the updated VIX ETP graphic below, I have coded the new VelocityShares products with a (V) suffix. In terms of covering the existing waterfront, the new VelocityShares products include VIIX and VIIZ to compete directly with VXX and VXZ, with the inverse XIV to compete against XXV.

The innovations come in the form of new leveraged ETNs as well as a new inverse ETN which targets VIX futures with a five month maturity. In the +2x space, these are TVIX (one month target maturity) and TVIZ (five month target maturity). In the inverse space, the new entry is ZIV, which has a five month target maturity.

For volatility traders, these are exciting developments. While I have no idea what the timeframe is for the launch of the new VelocityShares products, I can already envision dozens of exciting trades...which has me wondering why I am blogging about this instead of opening up a hedge fund...

Related posts:

• Interesting New Leveraged Volatility ETN Coming from Citi
• The Evolving VIX ETN Landscape
  

Disclosure(s): short VXX at time of writing